By Mayor Ken Waddell
Town of Neepawa |
Republished with permission from
The Neepawa Press
Original print date May 9, 2012
Over the past several months, the Town of Neepawa has been dealing with a difficult legal situation.
In 2011, radio station CJ97, which is operated by Mr. Bill Gade of Swan River, Man., began treating Town of Neepawa staff and Councillors in an ever more aggressive manner.
In 2011, radio station CJ97, which is operated by Mr. Bill Gade of Swan River, Man., began treating Town of Neepawa staff and Councillors in an ever more aggressive manner.
In some cases, staff and Councillors became very concerned by what appeared to be an unfair and relentless pursuit of information about the Town of Neepawa operations. Needless to say the relationship between the Town of Neepawa and CJ Radio deteriorated to a point where almost all communication was cut off.
During this time and in succeeding months, CJ Radio called for resignations of certain staff, speculated on staffs’ whereabouts, speculated on motives for decisions and in general and caused severe stress with many Councillors and staff. Since 2011, the radio station also filed over 240 FIPPA, (The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA)) applications with the Town of Neepawa office. To put it into context, this number is more than is usually received in a whole year by major departments of the province of Manitoba. Over the passage of time, the Town of Neepawa senior staff took a course of action whereby FIPPA applications were disregarded under provisions of the Act. Consequently 161 applications were disregarded under Section 13.1 of the Act; public body may disregard certain requests. Responding to even some of these applications that asked for things like copies of all emails from a particular staff or all correspondence relating to particular matter took thousands of dollars of staff time to respond to the applications. Responding to the rest may have caused months of work and large amounts of money.
Complaints about disregarding the applications were filed by CJ Radio to the Manitoba Ombudsman’s office. The Manitoba Ombudsman has found in favour of the Town of Neepawa after several months of investigation. The Ombudsman’s letter states: “Our office has completed a review of Mr. Bill Gade’s complaint of the Town of Neepawa’s decision to disregard 161 access requests under The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA); I apologize for the delay in providing our investigation report in this matter, a copy of which is enclosed. This complaint represents the first time that our Office has investigated and made findings about a decision to disregard requests under section 13 of FIPPA, which was amended in January 2011.
“As such, it raised significant issues of statutory interpretation relating to the rights of applicants and the obligations of public bodies. Because of the educational value of this report, we intend to post it on our website in the near future.” The summary of the reports states: “The applicant submit submitted 161 access applications to the Town of Neepawa on
one day. The Town relied on clauses 13(l) (a) and (b)under The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to disregard these requests.
“The Ombudsman determined that 22 of the applications were repetitious and all 161 were systematic in nature. “The Ombudsman also determined that responding to these 161 applications would interfere unreasonably with the operations of the public body. “The Ombudsman found that the Town’s decision to disregard the requests was authorized under clause 13(l) (b) of the Act.” Clause 13 (1) states: “because of their repetitious or systematic nature the requests would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or amount to an abuse of the right to make those requests”. The Ombudsman’s Report and letter is also posted on the Town of Neepawa website www.neepawa.ca
The Town of Neepawa, in addition to the significant amount of staff time handling the 161 FIPPA applications, ran up a legal bill of over $27,800 to file statements of Notices of defamation against CJ Radio. This legal action was deemed necessary by council to stand behind staff and Councillors in what had become a very frustrating and serious situation. Due to the continuous actions and comments by CJ Radio that Council felt were totally unfounded and unfair, these notices have been served. Further legal action may be pending.
The Town of Neepawa is pleased with the Ombudsman’s Report on this matter and believes that other issues Mr. Gade and his radio station continue to raise will be dealt with in a similar fashion. In the past two months, Town of Neepawa staff has been asked not to communicate with CJ Radio due to circumstances and ongoing legal actions. Until the situation was clarified, as we feel it has now been, virtually no information has been given to CJ97 in interviews with staff or the mayor. The Council of the Town of Neepawa is accountable to the taxpayers of Neepawa and will not be further frustrated by the unreasonable demands of CJ 97 Radio.
As a general practice, Town of Neepawa staff should not be responding to media interviews. The Mayor of Neepawa, the deputy mayor or a person designated by the Mayor or Deputy Mayor will respond to interview requests from any media outlet. We trust that the foregoing information and the material posted to the Town of Neepawa web site, will clarify both the situation and the actions taken by the Town of Neepawa concerning this matter.
This article posted on ValleyBiz.ca on September 29, 2016. The article has been published in our timeline according to the date of the original incident as part of a historical record of events.